Cycles
by Moiranne Rose
Summary: One needs both night and day, because these things just go in cycles. Reefie, with past Yuffentine. For Viva La Reefie's Disney quotes Contest.


**Hello, it's your resident teenage writing disaster MR!**

**Another competition, though since scrapped, from Viva La Reefie has brought me to infuse the wonders of Walt Disney with that of Tetsuya Nomura. In this way, we have our new edition of madness.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own the Reeve with the Goatee, the Yuffie with the attitude and the Aladdin with the quotes.**

* * *

Quotes:

Aladdin: You're very...(listens to Genie) punctual!

Jasmine: Punctual?

Aladdin: The palace looks pretty amazing, huh?

Jasmine: [_disappointed_] Oh, it's wonderful.

Aladdin: I wonder what it'd be like to live there, and have servants and valets.  
Princess Jasmine: Oh, sure. People who tell you where to go and how to dress.

Genie: I'm gettin' kinda fond of you, kid. Not that I wanna pick out curtains or anything.

* * *

**Title: Cycles  
**

**By: Moiranne Rose**

**Summary: ****One needs both night and day, because these things just go in cycles. Reefie, with past Yuffentine.**

**Beta-ed by: Shagi Tigori and GoldenShinyWireofHope (see that? Go look for her NAO.)**

* * *

_Never one for rules were you?_

_So you dappled in the one place that really didn't have rules._

_You ran to Love as a shelter,_

_and as it unleashed its misery on you,_

_you ran far, far away._

* * *

It was right after everything.

Right after Vincent went all I-have-to-ATONE-for-my-SINS and started shooting people up and taking on a criminal organization and getting his heart (fine, Protomateria) torn out by a scarlet psychopath, _and_ needing his ass saved by _yours truly_. He's 57! You'd think he'd have some form of common sense now. Pulling a Very Important Ninja out from Very Important Business was rather impolite, if I do say so myself.

It was when I saw him, standing next to that shrimp of a girl, that girl called Shelke, the way he smiled as he looked at her, the _fact_ that he smiled at _her_, I knew it was all over.

He told me that he'd gotten over Lucrecia, that night two months ago, when I yelled, bit, _screamed_ at him to _get over it_. That was me. Okay, that was _me. _Yet, he looked at her, and for that moment, he reached out to the shreds of his _Lucrecia_ and touched her, as if nothing _ I _ever did mattered anymore.

And just like that, I knew I'd fallen from his graces.

* * *

_Vincent was like the night in so many ways:_

_Dark, dark, dark._

_It sweeps over her, leaving her cold and lost in the seas of green and irritatingly brown ponytails._

* * *

I could still remember one conversation that I had had with Vincent. It started simple, because Vincent was always one for silence, and I'd tried at _least_ five conversation openers and it's _tiring_ to do try and make conversation with a brick wall, y'know?

"Godo's pretty weird in his letters. He says, 'Don't go around pulling stunts like you used to, you're not that young anymore.' What does he _mean_ by that? He's trying to say I'm _immature_. Well, I'm _sorry_, dad, but that's who I am. Got a problem with it? Then screw off."

I drew a deep breath and waited very politely, just in case Vincent wanted to say something. I'm really just _that _nice. He didn't say anything, so I went on. I couldn't _bear_ silences.

"Wutai's a great place, so I don't _blame_ Godo for loving it. The palace is cool and everything, and I get my own spa and hot spring, but there's a _line_, like most things. He can't just –" mumblemumblemumble_skip_. "_do _that." (Oh wait. Manners Yuffie, manners.) "Repeat that for me Vinnie, didn't catch it."

"The palace is amazing, isn't it?"

His mouth hardly moved when he said that. I almost didn't hear it, but, because I had ninja ears, I could hear _everything_. Was he _listening_? That's _exactly_ what I said! Frankly, I was disappointed with his hearing abilities.

"Oh, it's wonderful."

"I wonder," Then he stopped for a moment, eyes looking at the sky in the I-am-contemplating-either-suicide-or-my-dead-girlfriend look. "I wonder what it's like in there. With servants, valets..." He stopped again, and laughed a strange, un-Vinnie-ish bark of laughter, as if he thought it was stupid to think that. And it _is_. It isn't any fun in there at _all_.

"Oh, sure. People who tell you where to go and how to dress." I muttered in response. Vincent shot me this weird look, as if he didn't understand what I meant. He didn't respond either, which was, if I say so myself, very rude.I turned back to look at the boring, boring, _boring_ scenery.

It was one of those times, where it seemed like we would forever be on two different wavelengths, and, like parallel lines, would never meet.

* * *

_Reeve was like the day._

_Like that huge ball of burning gases called the sun._

_Bright, bright, _bright_._

* * *

I waited, cold and stiff, outside the operating theatre. I strained to hear the rhythmical beep-beep-beep-beep of the heart machine. As the hours wore on, the beeps gotslower, and slower, and...slower.

"So that's _your_ dad inside?" The frumpy, old lousy-dress-sense nurse tending to my father entered unannounced. I was immediately on my guard. Her lousy fashion sense might be contagious.

"Yes, _so_?"

"I'm so sorry for you. Do you have someone coming to get you?"

"Yes...my boss."

"Your...boss?" Her eyebrows went sky-high, and she peered at me like I was an alien or something. Maybe she's never seen _cool_ fashion sense before.

"Yes, got a problem?" I flash my super-cool evil eyes at her. Who is _she_ to pass judgment on me just like that?

"No, no. Not at all. Go in and say hello to your father, he's awake now. But be good, he...he doesn't have long."

She turned and walked away, barely concealing a wet, snot-filled boo-hoo, waddling as fast as she could. She didn't catch my mumbled words as my eyes narrowed.

"He is no father to me."

Yet, even as I said that, my girly-girl genes attacked me. My father was going to die. I had never thought I'd ever cry for him, or even care for him, but my eyes were threatening to defy me.

But it's not like I wanted to pick out curtains or something.

Every girl should have a mother and a father, but I never got that. I had a mother who was dead and a father who was married to his even then, I sat amongst the shards of my childhood and my messed-up womanhood, listening as each beep drew my only guardian further and further away.

_He _did this. My _father_ did this to me. No. I'm _not_ pushing the blame. Fair and square. If I had a father in my cry-baby-diaper-needs-changing days (which are _so_ unflattering to remember), maybe I wouldn't have fallen _desperately_ and _romantically _in love with two rotting old farts.

I didn't even get a chance at a proper lady's life. Y'know, snag a guy, kiss some, play around some, the usual stuff. I didn't get that. All I got was Vincent Valentine, who didn't even like me in _that_ way, and Reeve Tuesti, who's..._old_.

Yeah, sure, Vincent was old too. But he wasn't the one with the old-guy glasses, right? But then again, Vincent was never the type I would have been happy with. He wasn't such a...snuggle-up-with-popcorn-and-old-ninja-movie kind of guy. And he sure wasn't the type that would trek through thirty miles of good ol' Wutai snow to get to a hospital to wait with his girlfriend for her father. Even though, I mean, it wasn't _that_ much to ask, was it?

But Reeve, Reeve Tuesti (Gawd, how do you even _pronounce_ that?); he was a whole different story. He's reliable, no-strings-attached, _and_ has oodles of money. What's not to like, yeah? But he's _old_ and _gray_ and _needs glasses_. So, bye bye Reeve. Off the list.

Which leaves me with...zero.

It's unfair, y'know. It's bloody _unfair_.

I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of it ringing in my head, even when I only whispered the words under my breath.

* * *

With each hospital-slipper-made footstep, I looked up wearily to see another fat and bossy nurse brush by. Where was Reeve? He said he would come. And he keeps his promises, which is why I know he's going to come and sit by me to listen to the sounds of a slow death and, I dunno, laugh? Cry? He may be my _boss _ and it's ohso_wrong _to have him come, but he agreed because no one can resist the charms of the Yuffie.

I listened, drifting lazily in and out of sleep, hazily registering the clock reading 12.30 am, and then 1.43 am...and then...

* * *

_She thinks of Reeve, in the snippets of time between her thoughts about Vincent and materia._

_It hurts to look right at him, because he's just so good and so nice and she doesn't deserve him__,__ because he makes her feel guilty._

_Guilty that in her heart, somewhere deep__,__ deep down, she still loves Vincent. Even when Vincent clings to the fragment of Lucrecia embedded into a 10 year old girl._

_It's like a hopeless cycle of misery and heartbreak, and she's caught right in the middle._

* * *

...2.32 am.

In a whish-bang-boom-crash, Mr. Reeve Tuesti, boss of the World Regenesis Organization, goatee, old-man glasses and all, arrived as promised.

As I opened my eyes, I was suddenly blinded by the stark white walls reflecting some unforgiving bright lights. Instead of my usual witty statements, all I managed was, "You're very..." (yawn) "punctual."

"Punctual?"

His voice, the first defined noise to reach my ears in the last five hours, felt like a splash of cold water. I jerked up.

"Yeah, punctual."

He settled himself in the hard-backed chair next to me, only slouching slightly. I had the vaguest, dreamy impression that he had a red cloak.

Woah, what?

"Do I need to hold your hand?"

I gave a choked laugh.

"Nah."

* * *

_Sitting in silence._

_Silence._

_Silence._

_It's so _hard _to do that with Vincent. Something about him just makes her want to scream and fill up all his angsty brooding with wordswordswords._

_But Reeve, she can sit with him for ages and not bother about talking. Something about the way he smiles at her every so often and makes her feel in the centre of attention even without her fantastic linguistic skills.

* * *

_I didn't know how long we sat there. It was Reeve who listened patiently (But how could he _stand _that dressing, I ask you.) to each nurse that came out and went in from the King Suite. It was Reeve who got me cups of water and when I got tired of that (Who likes such a _boring_ thing like _water_?), juice. And, in the end, it was Reeve who woke me up to break it to me. Reeve's shoulder _was _pretty comfortable, I couldn't help but snooze for a bit. Ninjas have _got_ to have their beauty sleep, y'know?

"Yuffie. Yuffie. Get up."

"Wha...wh...five...more...minutes..."

(Getting-up-Yuffie-speak, while it's every bit as amazing as the Great Yuffie herself, is still not _as_ fantastic.)

"Yuffie, your father's...I don't know how to say it...well...Yuffie, he's dead."

I sprang up for the second time that morning. What. The. _Hell._

"What?"

I didn't mean to scream that loud, but Reeve's words did shock me. My mind was one big...blank.

"He's...gone."

"What? When?" That was a little too loud too.

"Just. A few minutes ago."

I couldn't say who got to the door first, me to see if my father had really expired, or Reeve to keep me from overreacting. All I was thinking of was "_He can't be dead._" As I skidded to the foot of the bed, there he was.

Pallid, cold and _pathetically dead_.

It was all Reeve could do to keep me from punching him, _hitting_ him for every moment he hadn't been a father, every moment he took from watching me grow up and put into running his _stupid_ little country. Reeve's arms were around my wrists, pulling them behind my back, and I was cryingcrying_crying_ like a little _girl_, all the while screaming every swear I'd ever learned from Cid's vast vocabulary.

I ran out of steam pretty quick (But what can I say, I only slept, what, three hours?). I sagged in Reeve's arms, suddenly _exhausted, _and he lifted me effortlessly out of the room. He ignored the nurses who had stopped and stared, muttering and pointing. He brushed past their fat little bodies and brought me, down the lift, down the front steps and...and...

I was plunked onto some bed somewhere, lifting my hand wearily in protest to such poor treatment of _the_ White Rose of Wutai. But I was so _tired_ and the bed was kinda...mm...comfy...

* * *

_Daddy, where are you?_

* * *

Reeve was hovering above me when I finally did wake up. I sat up immediately, almost colliding my brainy head against his. He pulled back to avoid collision, of course.

"It's seven in the evening Yuffie, but you don't need to worry about missing anything. I took you off the active staff on Compassionate Leave," (what the _hell_ was that?) "So you don't need to come down for at least another week." (Score!) "Just relax for now."

He ended off funny, with the strangest look in his eyes. But I didn't have the heart or strength to try and figure out what it was. I let my heavy head thump back down onto the soft pillow. As my eyes were sliding shut again, I suddenly remembered something. I pull myself up against the tantalizing embrace of sweet slumber.

"Hey, Reeve?"

He sat up from his slouching position on the couch and adjusted his glasses.

"Yes?"

"Can..." I stumbled on my words, everything suddenly jamming in my throat. Must be the tiredness, of course. "Can you arrange the funeral? I don't think I can. Y'know..."

He nodded, saving me the trouble of casting around for a word to convey what I felt (which can be troublesome when you just _can't_ find it). Reeve's so _understanding _at times.

"Of course."

I gave him one of my award-winning grins (the one that gets _every _male in a 1 mile radius weak at the knees) as I flopped over to catch some shut-eye. Before I got into happy-happy-dreamland, I had the strangest thought.

Vincent would never have done this for me.

And that thought's really nice, at this point.

* * *

_One needs both the day and the night, because some things just go in cycles._

_I know the night will always be enthralling to her, but it always ends, as most things in cyclical motion. At the break of dawn, the day will be there to greet her. Always._

_And she can take her time to feel better. Everything's under control._

* * *

**A/N: I think this one came across better, but then again, I'm still new to this ballgame. I guess I shall go cower in a corner and wallow in self-pity. How pathetically sad of me.**

**MR**


End file.
